Last I left you I wrote about how knitting seems to be taking me and my little cottage industry into new territory. I wrote about my concerns regarding micro fibres. I’ll come back to that topic, but first….Here’s my latest! She is called, The Strong Witch. This hat is an ode to all the women past and present who took a different path, had the courage to speak up, were feared or hated for simply stating the truth or for not fitting into society’s little box. She is not a Halloween hat, although ’tis the season. She is an every day hat and I am sure that the woman who ends up owning this hat will have no qualms about wearing her to the grocery store or the park or to walk the dog at any time of year. I look forward to meeting this woman.

But now, back to the future. The more I learn about the effect that micro fibers, like Polar Fleece, are having on our environment, the more I feel the need to work with natural fibers that will eventually go back to the earth. Like I said in my previous post, I own a lot of polar fleece and it would be completely nonsensical to throw it away, so I will use it up till it’s gone. But my passion is for the fabrics that have been given to us by nature and that’s the direction that I wish to take my business.

Here’s the tricky part. These hats are more time consuming and more expensive to produce, which means, they are more expensive to buy. It has always been important to me to make hats that are affordable to regular working women and every time I put a higher price tag on a hat I inwardly gulp. But I am beginning to feel more comfortable with these prices that reflect the cost of my time.

For several decades we have been fed a steady diet of fast and disposable fashion. We have been told to update our look annually. Out with the old, in with the new. Big box stores that sell clothing which has been made in factories with dubious standards have warped our collective understanding of the value of clothing.I am not dissing all factory made clothing or even the choice to manufacture in countries where wages are lower. When done ethically, a factory can support a community. But I am pointing out that cheap is always costly somewhere. It might be the cost to the lives of the women sewing clothing in unsafe buildings. It might be the cost of having nowhere to put all of the cheap clothing we put into donation bins, or it might be the cost to the life of a whale who has feasted on plastic micro fibers.

You don’t need to go back far in time to see that people used to pay a lot more for clothing that they did today. I have a hand made hat from the 1930’s with its original price tag. It was $30. In today’s equivalent that would be $440. Funny, because if I were to really charge a fair price (fair to myself) for one of my wet felted hats, that would pretty much be my price. People also owned a lot less clothing than they did today. Ever notice how the characters on Downton Abbey or Poldark wear the same dresses and hats over and over? That was the norm.

Perhaps going back to a time where clothing was laundered twice a year is not realistic, but there is a balance somewhere between then and now. We can stop and consider the results of our choices. We can decide to buy quality instead of quantity. We can choose to support our local economies. We can ask ourselves if we truly can’t afford to pay a fair price for ethically made clothing or is it that the dollar amount shocks our sense of what we believe clothing should cost.

I know I’m preachy. Sorry, I was born that way. But I’m also fallible, and like you, I live in the real world where we don’t always get to live up to our ideal standards. All I’m asking is that we begin to question the sustainability of cheap, fast and disposable. I’m usually not a fan of buzz words, but I really love the Slow Fashion Movement. It’s time has come…again.

Today as Lego and I walked the short distance between my house and the Lunenburg Academy, I met a man visiting from Ireland. Determined to learn a bit about life in Lunenburg, he proceeded to ask me as many questions as can fit into a couple of town blocks. Happy to oblige him, I did my best to answer. Most of the questions were pretty standard, but then he surprised me.

“When you moved to Lunenburg” he asked, ” What stood out as being different than anywhere else you had ever lived?”

My mouth seemed to know the answer before my brain could do any sort of editing. “Slow,” I blurted.“Everything is slower here. It takes a little bit of getting used to, but once you do, you can’t go back.”

In this little exchange it dawned on me that I have been pursuing ‘slow” my whole life. I have always been drawn to tedium. I even once painted a bathroom with a child’s paint brush. I walk slowly. I eat slowly. I think slowly. But now that I have discovered knitting I have truly arrived at the centre of the slow universe. Knitting redefines slow. In fact, it stands outside of time in a different dimension. Knitting is timeless.

I am finding that as soon as I pick up the knitting needles, I am calm. I get lulled into the rhythm of the stitches and before I know it the day is done. What should feel like a daunting project, instead feels like floating in the middle of a lake. One stitch a time (for weeks on end) and I am rewarded with a sweater or a shawl or whatever has been keeping me company on the needles.

I have been asked a few times if I will be selling knit wear to go with my hats. I can understand this question, particularly since I don’t talk about anything else, but for now the answer has to be, no. How does one charge for timeless? Does $1000 seem a bit much for a pair of socks? Because that would be the real cost of this pair.

I simply cannot measure my stitches in dollars. They can only be measured in love.

Here are some photos of my current shawl in progress. It’s called the Suiren Shawl and can be found on Ravelry and can also be found in Amirisu, which is available at Mariner’s Daughter in Lunenburg.

My idea of a custom order might not look like a typical custom order. In this case it went something like this…. Brenda- Hi Anna, I love your dangling flower hats. They are so Springy and I really need a fun hat.Me- Oh, sure, but would you mind if I made a couple of changes, like a totally different shape and completely different flowers located on a different part of the hat?Brenda- Well, O.K, you do what you think will suit me best.

And you see!!! I was right. I can’t think of a more perfect hat for this beautiful face.

You gotta love a woman who is not afraid to take Spring into her own hands.

Today I have been the most easy going spouse imaginable. Tony came into the kitchen and suggested I might be putting too many nuts in the salad….He turned off the corn that was cooking for 30 seconds because he thought it would overcook and even asked me what’s for supper tomorrow before we had finished this evening’s dinner. These actions, on a typical day, sometimes cause the throwing of sharp objects. But not today. Today, I just looked at him adoringly, batted my eyelashes and thought to myself, Don’t men say the darndest thing?…. sigh. That’s because today is the day that Tony finished and brought home my new sewing table. There are some serious perks to being married to The Lunenburg Furniture Co.

I’m jealous of myself. I have never seen a more beautiful sewing table. There’s even room for one more machine. I guess I’ll have to get one more machine.

Here’s a detail shot. I know I’m slightly biased, but the man is truly a brilliant wood worker. I can’t say that as a family of two crafts people and one hungry kid that we have money to spare for things like vacations or dental work, but we are rich in furniture, hats and love.

The man, himself. Brilliant woodworker. Electrician…not so much. He disconnected the wires to the motor of my machine and then couldn’t remember how to reconnect them. Made for an entertaining, spark filled hour. My job was to unplug and replug the machine while he tried every possible combination. I was a bit tense and he assured me that there was nothing to be scared of, but in the same breath he asked me if I knew what to do if he got electrocuted. He explained that I should push him away from the machine, but not with the front of my hands because the muscles on my hands would clamp around him and I would get electrocuted, too. So, while plugging and unplugging and running up and down the basement stairs to reset the fuse, I pondered techniques for pushing him out of the way should he start convulsing. I’d body check him…no wait, I scanned the studio for some object that didn’t conduct electricity…oh, the soles of my shoes are rubber. If the need arises, I could kick him. But then a radical thought popped into my head. Hey, Tony, if you were being electrocuted, could I pull the plug? Quite a bit of laughter. Yes, I could pull the plug. so glad it didn’t come to that. The machine is now successfully rewired.

Here are a couple of my latest creations made on my straw braid machine. Now that I have this beautiful table with a cut out for the machine, I will be able to make these hats without raising my shoulders to my ears.

John is our famous knot man. You can find him most summer and fall days on the Lunenburg waterfront. I made the hat. John did the rope work.

Just modelling, but man oh man does this porkpie look perfect on her.

I hand dyed the straw braid on this one.

I often make these pretty hats while listening to audio books about not so pretty history or politics. I think I’m trying to create an equilibrium.

This hat is not made from straw braid. It is hand blocked seagrass, but it is still worthy of a mention. Helene spent almost an hour with me in my studio helping to design her hat. When she came the following day to the farmers market to pick it up, she burst into tears. A total first. I think she was touched that the hat was really and truly made for her. Her husband was a little baffled by her tears, but as a woman of a certain age that cries at insurance commercials I completely understood the reaction. Happy to report that the tears didn’t last long.

There is often an idea in my head for years before it actually materializes. This is as true for hat making as it is for folding laundry or sorting through piles of paper.

Being an avid, albeit a negligent, gardener, I have been wanting, forever, to create a hat with special gardening status. I can now proudly say that I have accomplished this one task. The laundry and my child’s artwork from the past nine years remain untouched, but the hat has finally been made.

I present to you….Gardenia. She is made on my new (100 years old) straw braid sewing machine from raffia braid. This raffia braid has nothing to do with the raffia braid commonly seen in factory made hats. This stuff is substantial. The braid is really wide and really thick. It makes the most rustic hat that just makes one want to go out and plant tomatoes. The band and the rose are made from hand dyed linen. Yes, hand dying is one of the stupid things I do to ensure that I consistently hover just above the poverty line.

Here are some photos from my garden. It looks better in the photos than in real life. I love that cropping tool. If someone invents a garden tool to crop out the physical weeds, let me know.

Today’s blog is brought to you by a block of bees wax. This hat, modeled by Pam, comes later in the tale.

The story begins with these bees wax fabric food wraps. I got them from my friend, Elisabeth Bailey, the locally famous cook book author. If, like me, you lose sleep over plastic in the ocean, and are always looking for alternatives to disposable plastic, then you should contact Elisabeth and buy a pack of six for $28. You can message her on her Facebook Page.

You could use them to wrap up goodies from Rose Bay Scratch Baking, who are at the Lunenburg Farmers Market every second week. Best cranberry muffins ever.

I have been using them to wrap bits of cheese. The wax coating allows the fabric to hold the shape of whatever you wrap it around.

You might look at one of these wraps and say, “Cool beans”….and think no more on it. But for me, these little wraps inspired a whole new obsession. Now instead of losing sleep over plastic in the ocean I am losing sleep over the possibilities of waxed fabric.

Actually, this obsession with waxed fabric began when I saw these adorable waxed canvas bags in the window of Luvly in Lunenburg, last summer. They are made by the Antigonish Bag Company.Thinking that waxed canvas would make a great hat, I went about searching the internet to see where I could buy this fabric. I didn’t have much luck. But one year later, when I laid my hands on Elisabeth’s food wraps it occurred to me that one makes waxed canvas. Aaaahhhh….a total V8 moment.

So, then I started watching Youtube videos to learn how to wax canvas and this led me to all kinds of red neck survivalist videos. Really quite entertaining. Basically, you melt beeswax, or any other kind of wax mixed with oil and paint it on the fabric. Then you take a heat gun and melt the mixture into the fabric. I haven’t tried it yet, but I did get to the part where I buy 7 pounds of bees wax from my neighbour, Jason.

Holy Queen Bee, does this stuff ever smell strong! It’s a wonderful, sweet smell in small doses, but 7 pounds of it in my little studio smells like an Avon convention. I had to wrap it in plastic bags. Oh, the irony of it all.

Well, back to the hat. I bought some cotton canvas, hand dyed it my favourite colour and designed a new cloche hat. It’s quite practical without being waxed, but for the next round I will go all the way. Once the hat is waxed it will be totally waterproof.I’m not sure if you are with me on this image, but I see this as a survivalist flapper cloche…. or Glamping hat. I mean, why not? It is a rugged canvas hat, but it just happens to be beautiful. I know of no law that says you can’t be glamorous while being chased up a tree by a bear.I’m particularly excited by this little rose.

I learned to make the rose from this book, circa 1925, from The Woman’s Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences, Scranton, Pennsylvania. I’m pretty sure my sister-in-law, Amy, got me this book some time ago.

As we speak, I am dying a batch of canvas, periwinkle blue. You can be sure that I will let you know how my next hat, fully waxed, turns out.

In other news….there is life beyond the walls of my studio. Last Sunday morning I happened to be walking Lego while this beautiful tall ship, carrying the students from Class Afloat, was entering the harbour. The Bluenose was there to greet her. So much fun to hear the two schooners talking to each other. I was standing next to one other local woman and we talked of what a gift it is to live in a town where this sort of thing happens all the time.

To be honest, I’m not really a festivities kind of gal. Mostly I love to work in my garden. (Finally found some Rugosa transplants to start a hedge)

And make pretty hats in my studio. But I do love knowing that all these grand things are happening here and every once in a while I roll down the hill and join the party.If, however, you need to escape the hustle and bustle of a lively Lunenburg summer weekend, then come on up the hill a few blocks and come visit me in my studio at the back of town. If you time your visit right there will be strawberries….or raspberries….or blueberries….. but always hats.

Yesterday Tony and I went to see the movie, Maudie, about Maud Lewis’ life. For those of you who are not familiar with Maud Lewis, she was a very well known Folk Artist who worked from her tiny home in Nova Scotia before tiny homes were trendy and before folk art was cool.

This morning I woke up still moved by the film and I realized it is very much because I love everything her work and life stands for and in some ways I could see my own artistic journey reflected in her life.

So, about these pictures here. Obviously they are not by Maud Lewis. I painted this little table when I was in my twenties. I painted tons of stuff in my twenties. This is the only thing I still have because I had it in my mind that I would keep this table for my own child. You can see that years later my own child added stickers and I believe a robot doodle.

When I was 22, I was a dancer and I had a pretty nasty back injury. I had to have surgery and it took me 6 months to be able to properly walk again. Fortunately, right before my back gave out I met my first husband, Evzen. We are still great friends.

I had spent my whole life dancing and had never considered doing anything else, so when I found myself injured there was a period where I couldn’t see a way forward.

Evzen worked as an illustrator, so there was always paint lying around. With nothing else to do, I would pick up his brushes and play. I had zero skill. But Evzen really encouraged me to keep painting. He liked the charm of my zero skill painting. I painted on anything in front of me, all our furniture, walls, whatever. We started going to the flea market and buying old furniture. I would paint it and then we would have weekly yard sales. I would sell each piece for about $30. They always sold. I remember this chair that I had covered with flowers. It had not occured to me to first paint the chair before adding the flowers, so after I had spent days painting the flowers, I carefully painted around them. Took forever. I sold it to a woman in a Mercedes who beat me down on the price.

I am not comparing my primitive painting to Maud Lewis, but her story really brought back the time in my life where I first learned the joy of creating with my hands and I also learned that if you put love into what you are doing, people will be drawn to it regardless of your skill. My back did heal very well and I was able to dance again, but I never stopped making thing.

It was around 4 years after first picking up a paint brush that I walked into a hat shop and made the connection that hats were also made by hand. I was smitten. I didn’t know how to sew, but how hard could it be? My first hats were crooked and primitive and charming. I set up a homemade hat rack on the street and sold my hats for $30 a piece. I was amazed that people bought them, but as long as people kept buying them I kept making them.

I have always been enamoured with vintage hankies, embroidery, quilts and all other simple acts of beauty. The world is filled with women like Maud Lewis. Women who have quietly made pretty things just because they love to.

Hat making is no exception. While off in Paris, there were milliners making hats for aristocrats, simultaneously some woman in rural Nova Scotia was plaiting yellow birch shavings and hand sewing the finished braid into hats for women in her community. Folk milliners, using whatever was at hand. These women of the past are the ones I most identify with.

If you haven’t seen Maudie, please go. I hope she inspires you to go ahead and put beauty into the world.

When you have a sixty hat wholesale order to ship out in two days and you still need to make ten, label them, write an invoice and box them up, there is only one thing to do…go for a bike ride. I just really don’t have the personality for missing out on summer.

Today I hopped on my bike, followed the harbour out of town and went to Corkum’s Island. I’ll never get over the beauty of this place.

On one side of the road you have the ocean and on the other side of the road you have the woods. It’s a truly amazing scent cocktail.

I have been on my bike a lot lately. last year I let summer get away from me and I really can’t do that again. This year I’m making up for lost time. Being alone on these little jaunts, I tend to talk to myself. I seem to say, “unbelievable” a lot. The beauty is simply unbelievable.

I also seem to say, “No F-ing way.” quite a bit There’s no way to avoid the hills. To get from point A to point B there’s constant up and down.

But there’s always a reward at the top. This is the million dollar view of Lunenburg from the Golf course. As I was standing at the side of the road taking this photo, there were a few tourists doing the same. I was tempted to tell them that I actually live here and I have been taking this same photo for eight years. It never gets old.

There are certain times of the year when life feels perfect. This seems to be one of them. Hope you come visit this summer. This photo was taken on Second Peninsula, which is about 2km. from the town of Lunenburg. Follow this glorious road to the end and you come to a beautiful little beach.

Life is filled with moments worth celebrating. I have just had the unique privilege of understanding that joy reaches new heights when followed by an extended period of sadness.Since receiving THIS happy news, I find myself dancing around the house and my son begs me repeatedly to please stop singing.Sorry kid, Mama’s happy.

Whenever I experience an excess of emotion, I find hand felting a hat to be helpful. In fact, just last week, I learned that the repetitive, forceful throwing of the hat against the table ( part of the felting process, honest) was just what the doctor ordered. This week, I danced right through the creation of this hat. I thought it was going to be for sale, but Tony easily convinced me that this hat needed to be mine. It is the embodiment of true joy and there’s no way to put a dollar value on that. See you around town.